


Tony Stark and the Yawning Maw (of the Void of Space)

by inthemouthofthewolf



Category: House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski, The Avengers (2012), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Depression, Drabble, LITERALLY, Mental Health Issues, Nothing Hurts, POV First Person, POV Third Person, Philosophy, Post Avengers (Movie), References to Suicide, Science Bros, Vore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-03 23:19:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/703799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inthemouthofthewolf/pseuds/inthemouthofthewolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>exactly what it says on the tin. drabble. I wish I could keep going with it, but I'm not gonna fool anyone here, I probably won't ever. ever. I'm horrible. Bruce Banner/Tony Stark if you tilt your head and squint and realise that I just primed you to look for it, so it's there now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tony Stark and the Yawning Maw (of the Void of Space)

Tony Stark and the Yawning Maw (of the Void of Space)

 

Right before he passed the fuck out, he glimpsed a corner of space that no Asgardian or certainly Midgardian had ever seen before. He supposed he should feel... flattered? Lucky? Interested? There was a game Tony Stark wasn't very good at, and that game was “If I felt a different way about this, how would I act? How would I respond to the barrage of questions?” Banner was the one who asked the most questions about it-- Tony always brushed it off with a non-committal but valid “Hey, I was only conscious for like five seconds. Give me a break if I don't remember a lot of the details.” – but the thing is-- he was loath to admit it, but it-- the whole ambiguous Event of going through the fucking wormhole pretty much dragged along by a nuke to the other side of the universe and blacking out staring out into it-- IT scared the hell out of him. Even his college-kid-adolescent Nietzsche phase didn't really-- couldn't prepare him for it, the fucking void of space. And those words didn't even do it justice, no amount of waxing over him looking into the abyss and the abyss looking into him ever encompassed it. Even a lack of words didn't describe it because the silence was still somehow tangible. It was Nothing. Pure Nothingness. And how did it go again? “Known some call is air am. That is to say, I am not what I once was.”

They-- the team, the (rest of the) Avengers-- thought they saved Tony, but truth be told, Anthony Edward Stark died up there in the abyss, in the Nothing-- and sometimes he felt like, like in that film, something had pulled him out of his brain and shoved something else back in its place-- except there wasn't anything to do that. There wasn't anything that wasn't anything. The Nothing just broke him. He was unstable enough to begin with and it broke him. He drank more and slept more and ate less and the weeks post-alien-invasion-avengers-party seemed to rush by but linger unendurable-forever at the same time. And as overwhelming as it all was, it also didn't matter. It was... completely insignificant. All of it. And Tony didn't just mean these thoughts-- he meant his life-- everything he'd ever done-- all the wars and lives created and ended by him and his father combined-- the lives of everyone on this planet-- the lives of everyone in all the realms and then some because-- well--- everything has its time. Time is relative and meaningless. All things end-- but(?) if there's anything that Tony learned, there are exceptions to every rule. It all had Tony very jumbled-confused, honestly. And Tony wasn't used to being confused-- well not when it came to science(!). In fact, it kind of pissed him off-- and it doubled the deep-down realization of worthlessness because all this frustration he knew would come to naught, like everything does (doesn't it?). They would probably say he was a pessimist-- He would say that he was just overly realistic as to the cosmic importance of one human being out of over six billion on the planet earth alone-- so a big “Fuck You” to whoever thought Tony Stark was an egotistic self-assured self-important bastard. He just pretended so well that he fooled you. Tequila does wonders for that, by the way. Not so much writing in the third person. Kind of subverted that, actually. – I should probably shut up now.


End file.
